GERBILLON, JEAN-FRANÇOIS. — Jesuit, missionary, co-founder and superior of the French mission in Peking, b. at Verdun, 4 June 1654, d. at Peking, 27 March 1707. Having arrived in China (1687), he was received at the court of Emperor K’ang-hsi together with Fr. J. Bouvet among the imperial mathematicians; in 1688 he was sent as plenipotentiary ambassador to the Russians for the delimitation of the mutual frontiers; he made eight journeys into Tartary, sometimes accompanying the Emperor, taking advantage of these to study the country, its inhabitants, their usages and customs. Always highly esteemed by K’ang-hsi, who learned geometry from him, he obtained from the Emperor an edict of toleration for the Catholic religion (1692) and shortly afterwards, having cured him of an illness, a large tract of land for the erection of a church and a residence for the Fathers, inaugurated on 9 Dec. 1703. Above the entrance of the church three inscriptions dictated by the Emperor himself were placed.
He left, besides many letters partly unpublished: *Eléments de géométrie* (Peking 1689) and *Géométrie pratique et théorique* (ibid. 1690) in Tartar and Chinese; the two principal works are in Chinese: *Observations historiques sur la grande Tartarie* and *Relation de huit voyages dans la grande Tartarie de 1688 à 1699* (published in J. B. du Halde, *Description... de l’empire de la Chine et de la Tartarie chinoise*, IV, Paris 1735, respectively pp. 39-70 and 87-122).